


my old heart's sacrament

by sepulcher



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Codependency, Falling In Love, Human Experimentation, Multi, Polyamory, Pre-Canon, Rated For Violence, Trauma, Warning: Trent Ikithon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-06
Updated: 2021-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-19 06:34:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29870616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sepulcher/pseuds/sepulcher
Summary: The first time Bren saw Astrid and Eodwulf he was nine and the sun was high and burning in the sky, blessing them with its radiance on the first day of summer in the midst of Zenith celebrations.
Relationships: Astrid/Eodwulf/Caleb Widogast
Comments: 7
Kudos: 39





	my old heart's sacrament

**Author's Note:**

> i thought about blumendrei polytriad, blinked, and then this was written. this is essentially 10k of my headcanons, full stop. a note about the tags that i put on this fic, these elements are definitively present and, without a doubt, get significantly worse near the end, but this fic is centered on astrid/wulf/bren from start to finish. and i know liam said it's eadwulf but i wanted to be consistent with the tags on ao3 lmao and yes, i used the caleb character tag. **there is an allusion to animal harm if that triggers you.**
> 
> can't wait until the caleb origin comic spits in my face but in the meantime : this isn't beta'd, i warned you.

The first time Bren saw Astrid and Eodwulf he was nine and the sun was high and burning in the sky, blessing them with its radiance on the first day of summer in the midst of Zenith celebrations.

Well —— that was something of a lie, or a technicality, or lingering somewhere in between. Blumenthal was a town, not a city, and had a smaller population to match. It was sprawling, larger in diameter than most would think, but more farmland than building, with Crownsguard towers dotting the horizon around.

Because of the small population of their town, Bren had known of Astrid and Eodwulf, had seen them in the temple of Pelor with their families, had seen them in the small, sometimes cramped school building that they gathered into when a teacher was available. Astrid and Eodwulf were among a small handful of children that were in their collective age group, which was to say that there were approximately six of them within three years of each other.

So he had seen them, had said hello and shared lessons every now and then, but he hadn’t _seen_ them. The distinction felt strangely important to him, important enough that he felt devoutly certain beyond the shadow of a doubt.

It was magic. Literally, magic.

Zenith was Bren’s favorite holiday, the advent of long days and warm months spent in the fields preparing them for harvest, but it wasn’t only that. It wasn’t even primarily that. It was the bright colors that rolled into Blumenthal from deep in the forests, or perhaps it was Rexxentrum, and along with those vibrant banners came games and, best yet, _magic_.

Mages from the capital, mages who had been born and raised in Blumenthal but had left for their studies, and it felt like wonder itself followed them close behind. Bren had always wanted to get as close to the magic users as possible when they visited, wanted to watch with wide eyes as they summoned flame and water and lightning into their hands. Wanted to study their movements, as if by simply watching them he would be able to figure out to use magic.

He had tried, but.

Nine was, perhaps, too old to be expressing so much excitement as though he were still four summers old, and he wasn’t in the thick of the crowd as a result, lingering near the back. A part of him felt foolish to be watching magic with such wide eyes among gaggles of younger, smaller children, but simply watching it alit something in his chest —— and as he watched a magic user twist fire in her hands, he saw them.

Eodwulf, then Astrid.

It was peculiar. Bren wasn’t sure what, precisely, had caught his eye until the flame had been extinguished to the shouts and glee of the children around. But it was them, though they weren’t standing together or even anywhere near each other. The three of them had formed a triangle around the wizards, each creating a point, not quite equidistant from each other but there was a definite, absolute distance.

Eodwulf first, then Astrid.

Bren wasn’t sure if he was imagining the excitement on Eodwulf’s face. The boy had always been quieter, like Bren but unlike him, too. Quiet and still, like untouched water or an expansive sheet of ice, and Bren had always wondered… but it wasn’t important. Eodwulf was a child like any of them, but there had always been something about him that seemed far off, remote, and with a glance Bren felt like he was bearing witness to something close. Something tucked beside the heart. Maybe it was foolish.

It was definitely foolish.

Astrid, though —— Astrid looked ravenous. There was a hard, blazing look on her face that Bren had never seen there before, something that sparked curiosity in his chest and scared him all at once. It was strange to look at, unsettling yet comforting. Astrid had always been sure and carried herself well, the eldest of their cohort (if only by a handful of months) but here she looked as though she were looking at water as if she had been drinking nothing but dirt and sand for months. But perhaps he was imagining that, too.

It was an instinct. A child’s instinct, small and petulant, impetuous and impatient. Bren found himself grabbing at his chest, half confused and half sure that he was simply caught up in the energy of Zenith, of the sun blazing high over head, offset, no longer noon but creeping into the midafternoon.

Maybe he was imagining it.

His mama liked to say that his imagination was overwild, and she always said it with deep fondness, ruffling his hair and placing a kiss on his nose. Maybe it was the heat, or the energy in the air, or the desperate desire to know magic, too.

He could be imagining them. The looks on their faces. The objective surety that he knew, _he knew_.

What he didn’t imagine that they looked at him, too. He didn’t know what they saw, was certain that he was too terrified to ever find out, but.

 _But_.

He couldn’t _stop_ seeing them, after that.

It was absurd in concept. Something that he didn’t quite know what to do with, this childlike wonder bleeding outside of Zenith, the burning desire to hold fire in his hand, to understand how to mold the earth beneath them with a flex of his fingers and a whisper of an incantation. This, and them.

Bren had started to associated them with magic. Astrid and magic. Eodwulf and magic. Astrid and Eodwulf and magic.

The relation was lacking in logic but ——

He would watch them when he saw them. In the temple, in the school building, in the market. It was an odd fascination, something that he had once attributed solely to magic or to the few worn, leather soft books that his parents had managed to find for him that he read again and again and again and again.

Eodwulf running errands for his parents. Astrid watching her small siblings play while she tended to the cattle. Eodwulf reading, tucked into the corner of the school building. Astrid writing in the desk that everyone knew well was hers, near the front. How they would glance at each other, from time to time. How they would watch him in return, and gave him a start.

It was a furtive thing. Something odd. But something that became as much a part of his life as Frumpkin, as helping his papa in the fields, as resting his head in his mama’s lap and reading _Der Katzenprinz_ for the hundredth, thousandth, millionth time.

This acute, absolute awareness of Astrid Beck and Eodwulf Grieve.

Summer was dwindling to autumn that same year and Bren had turned ten when he was sitting outside of his home and listening to his mama sing and his papa talking quietly and Frumpkin was lying in his lap, lazy in the sunlight, when he saw Eodwulf standing on the other side of the shambling fence that marked their property. Astrid was perched on the fence next to him, and when their eyes met she beckoned for Bren.

There was no hesitation when he closed the book gingerly and twisted to set it on the windowsill, leaning his head into the shade, “Mama, papa, I’m going to go with some friends.”

Friends?

“Who, _liebling_?” his mama said, looking up from where she was mending a pair of trousers.

“Astrid and Eodwulf,” Frumpkin had jumped gracefully onto the windowsill, and his tail brushed against Bren’s face as he went back into the house. Bren’s feet weren’t touching the ground from how he was bracing himself. His arms already hurt. He could feel the two of them watching him.

“Oh,” both his mama and his papa looked surprised at that, but a heartbeat later his mama was smiling indulgently, “alright, Bren. Be back before dinner, okay?”

“Okay!” he was already turning and running, feet pounding against the earth, heart pounding in his ears as the distance between he and Eodwulf and Astrid closed.

Astrid twisted from where she was sitting on the fence so that she stood on the other side of it. As Bren drew closer he could see Eodwulf holding a book under his arm and it felt as though his pulse ratcheted higher and higher and higher. They watched him clamber over the fence, gangly and awkward but too impatient to go around, and there was a slight smile on Astrid’s face and a trace of amusement on Eodwulf’s.

“We haven’t told you where we’re going,” Astrid’s voice was clear as a bell as he struggled over the top.

“Or what we’re doing,” Eodwulf always spoke quietly. Always.

Neither gave Bren pause as he twisted and stumbled as he landed on the other side. “Well,” he straightened, brushing off his trousers self consciously. “What are we doing?”

Astrid and Eodwulf glanced at each other and it was amazing to Bren that Eodwulf was quite significantly taller than him already, even though Eodwulf was barely a year older and hadn’t quite reached adolescence himself, yet. After a moment, Eodwulf took the book from beneath his arm and showed it to Bren. For a moment he didn’t want to look, as if he already knew what it was and the confirmation of that knowledge would somehow take it away, but he looked anyways and couldn’t help but grin widely when he saw that it was a spellbook. Simple, beginning spells.

Bren could feel excitement vibrating beneath his skin as he reached for the book. He could see Eodwulf tense, a ripple of movement, but when his fingers brushed against the soft leather cover, the book wasn’t taken away. It was simply held there for a few moments, before Eodwulf held out of the book to him.

“Are you sure?” Bren could feel how wide his eyes had gone, the terrified—excited flutter of his heart in his chest. Astrid was watching them closely.

“Sure,” Eodwulf said, pushing the book into his hands. “We’ll all learn from it, anyways. Just give it back.”

“Come on,” Astrid turned and started down the road and they both immediately followed her. Instinctive. “There’s a small pond that we can practice beside.”

He wanted to ask, felt the burning _need_ to ask, how Eodwulf had gotten a spellbook, but there was an irrational fear in him that if he did, somehow all of this would cease to be. The offer would be taken away, or perhaps it never was to begin with. Maybe he had fallen asleep beneath the window of his home listening to his mama sing, nodding off against the familiar wall with Frumpkin sleeping soundly in his lap, lulled off by the midafternoon sun that still carried traces of warmth despite autumn being around the corner. Maybe he had fallen asleep, and he was dreaming, Astrid and Eodwulf both, the book in his hands, the lane that they walked, the quiet conversation that they both had, glancing at him to give his input every now and then.

He could ask. He didn’t ask. Instead, Bren imagined that he knew just how Eodwulf had gotten the book, imagination overactive as always —— the Grieve family were among those who were better off in the whole of Blumenthal, their farms sprawling, the patriarch of the family a direct line to Rexxentrum. They were not flush with money, but had a great deal more than his own family, and it had been Eodwulf’s birthday, recently.

Was this Eodwulf’s gift? Was Bren holding his gift in his hands? Had Eodwulf given it to him when he noticed that Bren had wanted nothing more than to simply hold it? Was he including Bren in this wondrous thing that was his eleventh summer’s gift?

Bren clutched the book to his chest and it felt warm, like a small, personal sun. Or maybe that was his heart. Or maybe it was the two of them, returning his interest, as if they all knew, instinctively and impulsively, that they and magic were somehow intertwined.

“You’re smiling,” Astrid had taken off her boots and put her feet into the water and Bren was sitting on the ground beside her, knees pulled to his chest, watching Eodwulf mouth incantations with furrowed brows and watching her watch him, or the both of them.

It was quiet, here. The water was cool, the stream coming from the nearby mountains, and it was shady, the trees giving them ample cover, half hidden from the small road beyond. Bren opened his mouth and then closed it, wondering.

“I’m happy,” he said quietly, against his knees, and he wondered if he should be embarrassed. Wasn’t, exactly, just… overwhelmed. “Are you happy, Astrid?”

She leaned back against her elbow, shifting on the ground and tilting her head back so that her face was in a perfect spot of dappled sunlight. Bren could hear the water ripple and imagined her kicking absently, a subconscious sign of her youth. “Yes, Bren, I am.”

He wanted to clutch that to his chest. He wanted, badly, horribly, to tuck that against his heart alongside Eodwulf’s gift whether it was deliberate or accidental and he wanted to stay here forever. Forever, and ever, and ever, to only leave here to embrace his papa and laugh with his mama and to return here, with them and this impossible understanding.

This monumental gift.

They made time where they could, the three of them.

There were their families and there was the farm and there was the trouble of the will of nature, irascible as always. Their spot was best, their pond was their favorite spot, but in the dead of winter when it was too chilly and none of them had the proper attire to bear the cold for any longer than it took to get from one place to another, and the pond was frozen over besides, they sequestered themselves away in Astrid’s room. Or Eodwulf’s room. Or the second floor of Bren’s house, listening to life continue below and around them as they bumped elbows and grabbed for the book and laughed, existing, together.

“Can’t wait until I know a spell to ward off cold,” Eodwulf hated the cold despite the fact that he generated an absurd amount of body heat. He always commandeered blankets in the dead of winter with a passive expression, though there was a flicker of a smile every time he jokingly pushed Astrid and Bren from the piles.

“You have to think bigger than that, Wulf,” Astrid nudged his knee with her foot, yanking the blankets so that she could get some.

“Like what?”

“Like changing your entire appearance.”

“Or creating whole buildings,” Bren said from where he was laying, splaying his hands above his face, “wizards always have towers, in stories.”

“I just want to be warm,” Eodwulf muttered, snorting with near silent laughter when Astrid darted in to grab the book from his lap, smacking his leg with it as she went. “They have towers in Rexxentrum.”

Bren twisted, looking at Eodwulf with wide eyes. He had never been to the capital himself, there had never been a reason for his family to visit and no funds to spare on a trip, besides, but in his mind he imagined it to be like when Blumenthal was bedecked for Zenith, just… larger. “Are they amazing?”

“They’re buildings,” Eodwulf’s shoulders rose and fell and he met Bren’s eye, mouth curving at the excitement clear on his face. “I’ve never seen them up close, only from afar. They look impressive, and I can only imagine the magic inside.”

“If we go to Soltryce Academy,” Bren said in a hushed voice, covering his smile with a blanket, “I bet we’d get to go into those towers.”

“We’d learn how to _create_ those towers,” Astrid turned a page in the book, as though they had not all read it at least thrice, at this point.

“We’d have lessons in those towers,” Eodwulf shifted his legs and settled them over Bren and Astrid’s. His weight was warm and comforting and Bren grinned, wanting to pull the blankets over his head for no reason at all, but not having enough slack to do so.

But in the springs and summers and autumns they would steal away from their respective duties at the ends of the days, would slip away from the temple, would sit together during school with their heads together and quietly, privately, practice magic with each other. They would swim in the pond and live and be and exist together, as if they were always meant to be.

By the first spring after they had gotten this book each of them could summon a flame to their hand and they were progressing faster and faster —— they were nearly equivalent. Almost the same. Always keeping pace with each other.

They became inseparable. Or near to, anyways, and the oddity of his skin and his circumstance started to become almost an afterthought, in Bren’s mind. There was still something not quite right, something slightly off, but with Astrid and Eodwulf all of the sharp edges of existence seemed to be duller. Less of a concern. His mind was less over loud, his thoughts focused so utterly on magic and _them_ that everything else seemed secondary.

People would remark when they were seen apart, some would recognize the seeking looks on their faces and gesture to where the other two had gone, nearly everyone knew that they were learning magic and it was treated with indulgent amusement, Rexxentrum so nearby. None knew precisely how they had progressed, though Eodwulf got another spellbook for another birthday, and then another, and they poured over it together, heads bent collectively over the pages.

They entered adolescence and years wore away and when the invitations to Soltryce Academy came on the heels of yet anther Zenith where a wizard had caught their abilities it felt like their dreams were becoming reality.

(His papa burst into happy tears when he read the letter and his mama got misty eyed and hugged him so tightly that he felt as though all of his bones were rearranging in the best way possible. Pride was alight in his chest, something that glowed more than it burned. It felt like Eodwulf’s spellbook clutched against his chest, it felt like Astrid saying, “Yes, Bren, I am,” it felt like something that he wanted to tuck against his heart to keep there for the rest of time, for the rest of his life.

Bren counted down the days until he would leave for the academy and fell asleep every night, smile pressed against Frumpkin’s fur, the too long and bony angles of his arms holding his old, old cat against his chest.)

Becoming a student at Soltryce Academy felt like something slid into place at last, like he had been waiting endlessly and the dawn had finally come. A final piece of a puzzle, the final movement of a spell, a well fitting pair of trousers that Bren never wanted to take off. Something that didn’t only dull the strange edges of reality that pressed against him but softened them entirely until they fell away: to be around magic, and magic users, and those like-minded in wanting to pursue and understand magic. Learning it from amazing teachers, learning it beside his peers.

It was amazing. It felt like pure, concentrated happiness, even beneath the weight of their work and the expectations that were placed on them.

Watching Astrid’s face blaze brightly when she mastered a spell. Watching Eodwulf’s spine straighten as if weight was being steadily lifted from him. Bren watched them, as he had always watched them, and he wondered if he carried with him the ravenous expression that Astrid once had, before she had held magic in her palms.

There were other students and other friends to make and Bren felt awkward, at first, yet not misplaced. It was harder for him to make friends compared to Astrid, who was well spoken and commanding, even compared to Eodwulf who, despite preferring quiet, was perfectly capable of holding conversations without being easily overwhelmed the way that Bren was. As ever, he felt in awe of his friends, and scrambled to keep up, scrambled to know and understand and see.

But it was easier than he thought. Where once he felt strange among his cohort, never knowing what to speak with them about and hesitating to speak at length about his interests for fear of their confusion and judgement, here it was natural. Bren felt as though he was flourishing, speaking of magic and the limits of it and the extents of it and celebrating his knowledge, jumping from topic to topic with utter glee.

Let there be no room for doubt, however, that in spite of his friends and the connections that he made, it was Astrid and Eodwulf that he felt most comfortable with. Astrid and Eodwulf that he sought out without pause or hesitation. Eodwulf that he tucked himself again when he felt overwhelmed. Astrid’s room that they all piled into late in the night, practicing magic beyond what their teachers had taught them, talking quietly with each other.

“Are you happy, Astrid?” Bren asked a month into their studies, sitting cross legged on her bed. She was reading, and they were waiting for Eodwulf.

She looked at him, and the smile she gave him after a moment was beautiful. Radiant. She blazed like fire and right now, she looked like the sun. “Yes, Bren, I am.”

He pressed his smile into his knees, and they looked at each other.

They were wizards, or wizards to be, but they were kids, too.

“Race you to the top!” it was Bren or Astrid who shouted it, generally, and Eodwulf who laughed and kept up with them.

Eodwulf almost always won, and they were never sure how, other than brute strength.

Brute strength probably explained it.

But they laughed and laughed and laughed and did small spells on each other and elbowed each other and took meals together and went to lessons together and learned together. They spent nearly every waking hour with each other, and on days without lessons they would lounge around the grounds or in one of their rooms, most often Astrid’s.

Bren always, always stole Eodwulf’s coat when they went out dancing.

“You have your own, Bren,” Eodwulf said, reaching over to squeeze Bren’s face teasingly between his hands. Eodwulf would never hurt him, of course.

“Yours is warmer,” Bren ducked out of his grip and pressed his face into Eodwulf’s collar, dancing out of his reach and bumping against Astrid, who slipped her arm into his without hesitation.

“You mean bigger.”

“Bigger and warmer,” Astrid said, twisting to twirl Bren under her arm and he went, laughing softly despite the fact that they had just left the dancing hall and it was dark and, relatively, quiet on the streets of Rexxentrum. “You’re a furnace, Wulf.”

Eodwulf sighed, a heaving and put upon thing that was entirely for show, rolling his eyes to the sky up ahead, and Astrid reached for him. They turned together seamlessly, and he dipped her with a near impossible amount of grace for the fact that they were all teenagers, messing about in the midst of the night, returning to their dorm together.

Bren watched them and hid his smile in the collar of Eodwulf’s coat, breathing in the smell of leather and the tang of magic and, faintly, the scent of hay that still carried itself on Eodwulf, somehow.

It smelled like home.

Here was the thing: Astrid and Eodwulf were all that Bren looked at. They were all that he had looked at for years, ages, for what felt like the entirety of his lifetime. They consumed his thoughts, they were so intrinsically linked to magic, to his life, to his lifeblood that he thought of them when he woke and thought of them when he laid down to sleep. They were his, as much as people could be his.

Astrid wasn’t beautiful, not the way that storybooks painted beauty. She was handsome and terrifying, a strong nose and bright-dark eyes that left nothing unseen and nothing unknown. She was glorious, wonderful, one of the greatest things that Bren had ever seen and one of his favorites to look at, the gentle curve of her jaw and the way that her face would split into a wide grin as if her face had been made to do so but had just forgotten, somehow, for a time. He could listen to the way that her voice carried for hours, could listen to her read for days, could watch with fascination as her hands deftly dealt with magic, a wondrous sight to behold.

Eodwulf was beautiful like storybooks said. He was all dark hair and sharp features and a broad build, strong from farmwork with the muscles to show for it. Bren sometimes thought of his hair as being black as night, eyes not quite like ice nor the sky but something unknowable in between. Eodwulf certainly wasn’t pretty and maybe people would disagree if Bren said that he was beautiful but he was certain with an unshakeable absolution, Bren was caught on the way that he would smile first with the corner of his mouth, always hard earned, the way that his face was forever serious and he seemed remote but how that would shift and change for Bren. For Astrid.

Astrid was inspiration and Eodwulf was steadiness and Bren adored them and felt, with an odd surety for an adolescent, that he never wanted to be apart from them. Couldn’t imagine and if he tried, he couldn’t bear it.

And he saw the way they watched him. Saw the way they watched each other. It was a reckless sort of abandon and that furtive knowing that they all shared.

When they were chosen to be the legendary Trent Ikithon’s personal pupils, Bren thought that he might explode with pride.

And when, later that same day after the sun had set and it was just Bren and Astrid sitting on the floor of her dorm room waiting for Eodwulf to return with snacks pilfered from the kitchen, Astrid turned to look a him with a hard, blazing look that reminded him of when he had truly first seen her, he knew. He knew, and his eyes fluttered close as his heart ratcheted in his chest and anticipation made anxiety twist in his chest and.

Anxiety melted away when she kissed him.

“I’m happy,” she said minutes or maybe hours later, and their knees were pressed together and they were looking at each other quietly.

Bren felt like the sun was shinning on an endless summer day.

The pain started.

But it was worth it.

It had to be worth it. For country and home.

He shouldn’t lurk outside of Astrid’s door.

Granted, it was less purposeful that it was accidental, but he wasn’t sure what gave him pause. It wasn’t the hour nor the way that his arms hurt fiercely or the way that the entirety of his body hurt, somehow, nor was it the exhaustion that pulled at him to the point that he was afraid that he would simply collapse here, right outside of her door.

Bren supposed that it was because he could hear Eodwulf and Astrid’s voices, but —— why would that give him pause? They talked to each other often, low murmurs that Bren could be privy to if only he asked, sometimes leaning towards each other when they were all together and he was curled up with a book, watching them but not quite listening.

Their voices were familiar. They were a kindness, for him, something that he could anchor himself upon without thought nor hesitation, simply holding onto the rise and fall of their words, the gentle cadence with which they spoke.

Yet he found himself hesitating, heart fluttering.

“Eodwulf,” Astrid said. Her voice was muffled by the door, but not entirely silenced, their dorms not soundproofed. “Eodwulf, look at me.”

An image came to him. Vivid enough that it seemed pulled out of reality, for all that Bren did not know precisely what lurked behind this door. He could see the simple layout of Astrid’s room, identical to other dorms that students stayed in. He could imagine Eodwulf sitting on the bed, head bowed and palms together, arms bandaged the way that Bren’s were, the way that Astrid’s were. He could imagine Astrid kneeling in front of him, one knee on the ground the other at a ninety degree angle, her hands braced against his knees, a sureness about her that had faltered somewhat in these past few weeks with pain wracking their bodies and magic thrumming too bright beneath their skin.

Bren wanted to scratch his arms.

A murmur. Something too low for him to hear.

“I am afraid to sleep,” Eodwulf said, and Bren’s chest ached, suddenly. His arms were a secondary thought, discarded in place of a fierce desire to —— something. Something.

“I know,” Astrid’s expression was probably shattered calm. Exhaustion in its place, pain along the edges.

He imagined that they kissed.

No, he was sure that they did.

Bren wasn’t certain where the surety had come from, what had inspired it. Perhaps it was the way that Astrid and Eodwulf leaned towards each other, or else it was the way that they glanced at each other, or maybe it was simply Bren’s overactive mind. _You have an overactive imagination, liebling_. 

He could see it clearly in his mind’s eye as if he were watching it.

He wondered if it should upset him, cause some form of unrest in him, if he should be jealousy or somehow angry at Eodwulf. Or maybe angry at Astrid. He wasn’t, was the thing, and he wasn’t sure why or how he felt at all.

The tales that his mama had spun for him, once, often included romance. Affection, love, adoration. Only rarely was there betrayal in her stories or the stories that he read, but there were at times jealousy or resentment. But, if they were a fairy tale, if they were characters of a story, who would be the main character? Who should be jealous of whom? Was is Astrid who should look at the way that Bren found himself looking at Eodwulf and feel fury churning in her chest? Was it Eodwulf who should look at them and the touches they share and be distraught?

Should Bren feel unrest, standing here outside of Astrid’s door carrying with him the certainty that they had kissed where Astrid had kissed him and where he had kissed Astrid?

He wasn’t sure how long he had stood there for, pondering this, holding his arms and shivering slightly in the drafty hall. He would never be sure how long he had stood there before he heard Eodwulf say, voice quiet and low, “Bren.”

It occurred to him that he should feel caught and flustered but instead he simply opened the door.

Astrid was asleep, curled onto her side. Eodwulf was laying beside her on the small bed, his back pressed against the wall, and for a moment it was absurd to Bren to see how they fit together and made room for each other on such a narrow space. Astrid’s head was on Eodwulf’s arm, and Bren missed her longer hair with a sharpness that surprised him.

“Wulf,” Bren wanted to say his name again and again and again. He wasn’t sure why, precisely, but he wanted to, anyways.

“Come,” Eodwulf said, and Bren closed the door and made his way over to the bed.

There was no feasible way for the three of them to fit on this bed. Bren was skinny, for all that he had helped his papa on the farm he had never built much muscle and he was more bon than anything, and Astrid was narrow shoulders and a compact, athletic build, and they would be hard pressed to squeeze onto a bed just the pair of them. Eodwulf, however, was all broad shoulders and muscle mass and he was barely on the bed at all, but he was still, somehow, taking up half the bed lying on his side, pressed against the wall.

Bren laid down anyways and Astrid shifted, not quite awake but making room for him besides, and he balanced himself on the edge of the bed until Eodwulf pulled him closer and he felt.

Safe.

He finally slept.

To be a Volstrucker agent was a high honor indeed.

Being privy to such things and being tutored by Master Ikithon personally was the greatest honor that any student of Soltryce Academy could have. They were his only students, at the time, and he spent a great deal of time fostering their skills and abilities.

Not every day was pain. Not every day was in that room at the top of the tower, muffled screams and blinding pain, magic threatening to burst out of their skin.

Some days were simply lessons. Fine tuning their skills and broadening them. Learning how to speak to people, how to read people, how to extract information from people —— Astrid and Eadwful took to this far faster than Bren, but he got the hang of it, too, after a while. Other days were simply magic, how to better harness it, how to bed the elements to their will, how to change their appearances so that they could melt into a crowd.

And they were together. And they still went dancing.

The greatest honor.

The room (yes, _the_ room) smelled like magic and iron and wood and fear.

Bren feared it in an objective way, a tertiary way, the way that a person would fear a reportedly haunted house several towns over. As if it weren’t directly impacting him, or its effects on him were remote and easily avoidable.

It wasn’t logical, but that was how it felt.

He feared it in a far more visceral way in his sleep, when he would slip into dreams and experience nothing but pain and terror and when he awoke Astrid would be holding him tightly against her chest, legs tight around his to stop him from kicking out, and Eodwulf’s hand would be on his head, bracing and gentle.

But here, within the confines of the room, he did not fear it. There was no room for literal, genuine fear when he had to make room in his skin for crystals, when he had to make room in his body for magic, when he had to brace himself for pain, the sharp edge of a scalpel against his skin.

In the end, his least favorite part of this room as listening to Eodwulf scream and Astrid’s breathing get heavier and heavier as she bit back cries that turned to wails. He hated the restraints, too, leather biting into his wrists and ankles as he writhed against his will. He hated how magic felt unnatural with those things in his body.

Master Ikithon was always proud of them, though. Always praised them for their service to their country and ensured them that they were making great progress, great progress indeed, they were well on their way to becoming genuine Volstrucker agents.

Bren ignored the heavy weight of anxiety in his chest. Laid his head on Eodwulf’s lap or counted Astrid’s freckles for the millionth time when it became too much.

It helped. And it as an honor.

Bren desperately wanted to ask Astrid, _Are you happy?_

He wanted to hear _Yes, Bren, I am_ fiercely, like a man craving sunlight after an eternity in the dark.

But he was afraid of what would happen if she said _No_.

“You alright, Bren?” Eodwulf’s hand was firm on his shoulder, a comforting weight.

He felt overwhelmed and frustrated —— magic came so _easily_ to him a great deal of the time and it still did, magic was like breathing, but his arms hurt and when Master Ikithon would set crystal into their skin magic felt like knives digging into his skin, his chest, stabbing with every breath. Bren resented it, wanted to claw at his skin and peel them out even now, when they were gone and when his skin was his own and his magic was his own. It was too much. It was terrifying in its enormity and he felt impossibly small beneath the weight of it and its shadow.

He resented it. He knew that it was the highest honor.

Bren felt like a child throwing a tantrum, hands balled in his lap. Of course Eodwulf had found him so easily, so unerringly, sitting on his own on the fringes of the campus, wanting to peel his skin off and pull his hair out. Bren hated unknowns, hated being bested, hated that Eodwulf was here to comfort him.

“I’m fine, Wulf,” Bren said after a moment, and Eodwulf sat next to him on the bench. They were quiet for a while, listening to people move and talk and live some ways away. Bren had chosen this area for a reason. It at least had the illusion of being hidden away from the rest of the campus, few would stray over here. “It hurts,” he said after several minutes of silence. His voice was small and he rubbed his hand against his arm, mouth twisting.

“I know,” it was soothing, to hear Eodwulf admit as much. Eodwulf wasn’t the stalwart wall that many assumed he was. For all that he was tall and had a serious expression as though he were far older than he was, he wasn’t emotionless nor untouchable in such a way, and Bren knew that well, knew that Eodwulf was far more emotional that many presume —— but it was soothing, still, to hear him say it aloud.

Bren hissed when he tightened his hold around his arm thoughtlessly. He could feel himself start to bleed again and, ridiculously, wanted to cry for a moment. He was seventeen summers old, nearly a man, and there was no reason to cry. This was an honor.

Eodwulf took his hand gently, carefully, and tangled their fingers together to stop Bren from worrying at his bandages any further. His touch was warm and broad and their hands were both calloused, a natural side effect of their childhoods growing up on farms and working with their hands. Eodwulf’s touch was familiar, a boon, a salve on the parts of Bren that were smarting and bleeding and hurting. This was the hand that pulled him out of the pond, that handed him their first spellbook, that tousled his hair when it had been longer, curling at his ears. This was the hand that guided him gently but purposefully, large on his back and firm on his shoulder. This was the hand that had taken his to dance what feels like years ago but wasn’t so long ago at all.

He could hear how shaky his exhale was. He squeezed Eodwulf’s hand and was unspeakably grateful that Eodwulf’s strength was still there, that he could still feel the power that his arms held.

And when Bren looked at him he found Eodwulf watching him and there was something almost devout in his expression.

Bren wasn’t sure who kissed who.

It didn’t matter, anyways.

Bren’s life did not begin with Astrid and Eodwulf. His life began with his parents, with his home, with Frumpkin. His life began with him crawling across the floor of the home that his parents had built, had begun with his father’s weary face, listening to the way that he had sometimes awoke in the middle of the night gasping, as if something had been chasing him in his dreams. His life began with listening to his mother soothe him, her voice gentle yet unyielding, until his father fell asleep again. His life began with listening to his mother sing and his father join along, listening to their voice harmonize perfectly, amazingly, and he listened with a smile on his face, curled into the corner their small home.

His life began with the fields and the harvest and dirt beneath his fingernails, with the knowledge that his small build and frame meant that his father had to do a great deal of the work alone, and wondering, at times, why his parents had not had more children. He never asked.

Bren’s life did not begin with Astrid and Eodwulf. It did not begin with magic.

But some days he almost forgot.

He still thought of his parents with fondness and missed them and their home and Frumpkin lying curled in his lap with a longing that was childlike and made him feel like he was eight once more and chasing after his father in the fields, laughing.

Yet there was a distance. There was Soltryce Academy and Master Ikithon, who was raising him to be something else, something different, to live in service of their king and do so with adept mastery of his craft and with confidence, to become something greater than himself. There was all that and Astrid and Eodwulf beside him, always, every step of the way.

Home had become the fierce confidence that Astrid embodied, her constant thirst for knowledge that he found extraordinary, a miracle of existence. Home had become the way that she took his face in her hands and kissed him like the world was burning down around them. Home had become Eodwulf’s steady shoulders and the way that his head would duck momentarily when he was thinking about something or when he was happy. Home had become the way that he bumped his nose against Bren’s before kissing him. Home was the way that Astrid and Eodwulf reached for each other, fingers skimming along their wrists, the way they kissed briefly when Bren was reading.

His life did not begin with them, no. But he chose them. And they chose him in return. And they belonged to each other in the way that little else in this world belonged to any of them individually.

(Or it felt that way, at least.)

Their dalliance or entanglement or the natural progression of their relationship or whatever it could be called changed nothing. Or maybe it was that it changed everything.

There was no great change nor shift nor adjustment that they made. They still spent hours in each other’s company, still spoke to each other quietly, whispering in each other’s ears, still sprawled on the floor of most frequently Astrid’s room, discussing magical theory and the progression of their training. They still relied on each other, leaned on each other, and they still experienced everything together.

The friends that they had made during their first year at Soltryce seemingly fell away. It wasn’t of high importance, the three of them were by and large occupied by Volstrucker training, by learning the skills that Master Ikithon laid out for them, and they had each other —— that was what counted and what was most important.

Bren loved them terribly. Achingly. Utterly. So much that his heart felt full to bursting, almost overwhelmed by it. He found himself craving Astrid’s unwavering surety, needing Eodwulf’s steadiness, wanting to hold Astrid against his chest and read over her shoulder only to bump their heads together when she turned a page too quickly on purpose, wishing to curl against Eodwulf’s side and remain in mutual quiet as Bren traced the musculature of Eodwulf’s arms absently, fingers tapping along his skin in a frenetic beat, simply yearning to exist near them whenever Astrid ran her fingers through the close crop of Eodwulf’s hair and Eodwulf buried her face in the top of her head and they held onto each other so, so tightly.

It was the same and it was different.

But it was steady. It was steady.

(An interlude:

It could have been willful ignorance or else genuine blindness, how dangerous their entanglement was becoming. Their dependency on each other, how much they needed each other day by day. What brought them together once was magic and fondness for each other and it had turned into pain and fear and a sense of duty that had been planted and then took root without their notice.

Perhaps Bren should have noticed in the way that Astrid’s hand became gradually tighter when she clasped the back of Eodwulf’s neck and brought their forehead together to breathe. Or the way that Eodwulf watched both of them when he thought they weren’t looking with an expression that spoke of fear, as if afraid they would disappear if he looked away for even a second. Or the way that Bren, himself, coped poorly when he couldn’t be near them. Or the way that Astrid chased after further knowledge but always, always looked back to make sure that they were keeping up.

Or perhaps they all should have noticed that what was weaving them together was no longer simple, straightforward affection, but rather their circumstances.

Or it was simply that they were children. They were children, and then young adults, weathering a terrible storm that should not have befallen them at all and they held onto each other petulantly, covetously, daring the world to dare take them apart. It was not their responsibility, then, to notice these things. Was it?

Caleb wondered. He wondered, at times, if he had truly chosen them. If they had truly chosen him, in return. If they were ever his, or if they had all been Trent’s, and he simply lorded over them with a terrible smile as they reached for each other in isolation.

The love that they shared —— was that theirs? Was it ever truly theirs?

Sometimes Caleb was positive that it had been. That he had loved them and they had loved him in return and that was a love untouched by Trent Ikithon, even if it was changed by their circumstances.

On his worst days, he mourned that this, too, was ruined by the man that destroyed his life. And he hadn’t even noticed.)

They went dancing less and less.

It was both that they had less time to and because they were frequently too tired, too weary. Bren found that he missed the raucous energy of the dance hall, but that it was far better for all of them if they simply remained in one dorm or another. He missed it, yes, but the concept of the noise alone gave him a splitting headache and made his eyes hurt, a steady throbbing in his head that was already present, these days, but worsened by the mere concept of noise.

But he… missed it.

“We should dance again,” it was quiet and Astrid was sitting at the head of her bed, back against the wall and knees crossed, staring at the opposite wall. Eodwulf was sitting on the floor at the foot of her bed, back against it, flipping absently through a book. Bren was sitting on the rickety chair at Astrid’s desk, harmless fire twining through his fingers.

He missed his cat.

“Could go to the dance hall,” Eodwulf didn’t sound enthused by the idea, and he turned another page of hs book.

“No,” exhaustion flickered over Astrid’s face so quickly that Bren wasn’t sure if he had imagined it. Eodwulf looked thankful, for a moment.

“No,” Bren echoed, passing his thumb through the flame. Watching. “Too much noise.” Eodwulf grunted in agreement. “I just miss dancing.”

Did he miss dancing, or did he miss the energy to do so? Or the willpower to do so? When was the last time they had went dancing, besides? It felt like an eternity ago. If he stretched his memory especially hard, he knew that it had been a month ago. Perhaps a month and a half. Maybe even two months.

A year ago they had gone almost weekly. To enjoy the sights, the atmosphere, to talk together in a crowded place and dance. When was the last time that they had gone out at all? To the shops? To walk the streets of Rexxentrum simply to walk them?

They were all quiet for a while. Bren was fine with that —— he hadn’t expected much at all from his statement, had just felt the compulsion to make it known and had felt safe enough to say as much. He was always safe, with Astrid and Eodwulf. They had always taken him in stride, always listened to him, and even when they did not verbally respond he knew that he had been heard, and that was more than enough for him.

So it surprised him when Eodwulf pushed himself to standing, his movements graceful as always despite his bulk, and surprised him more when Eodwulf held out his hand to him.

“We’re going to hit the walls,” Bren took his hand anyways, fire dissipating, and let himself be pulled to standing and then close to Eodwulf’s chest.

“Oh well,” Eodwulf said simply.

“Don’t break anything,” Astrid said, not moving from her place against the wall, but there was a faint smile on her face. Something close to amused affection lingered in her eyes, and Bren recognized that expression. She often looked that way, when she looked at them.

It felt silly, to dance without music, but Eodwulf started humming a few moments later and Bren pressed his smile against Eodwulf’s shoulder before spinning with him. They turned about the small, cramped dorm room, and they laughed when their elbows bumped against walls and when Eodwulf crashed against the desk accidentally and Bren wanted to collapse into giggles when he faked dipping Eodwulf, knowing that there was no weight at all on his arms and it was Eodwulf’s ridiculous core strength that dictated the depth to which he arched backwards and sprang back to standing form.

For a spare few moments it felt as if some strange, invisible bleakness had lifted from Bren’s heart as they turned about the room and hit the bed and Astrid made an annoyed noise and then stared hard at them when Eodwulf held out a hand for her to take, though she took it anyways with a roll of her eyes. It occurred to him, surprising the way that a sudden fall was, that he felt happy as the three of them struggled to find a rhythm, holding onto each other and letting each other go and whirling around haphazardly.

Eodwulf kept changing up the tune and the momentum at apparent random and he didn’t even blink when Astrid stepped on his foot and told him to make up his mind and Bren grinned when Eodwulf promptly picked Astrid up and spun her around, and he felt incandescently glad when he heard Astrid laugh her clear, bell-like laugh.

He hadn’t heard it for a while. He hadn’t seen Eodwulf smile like that for a while.

The thought should have been sobering, but instead they kept dancing, stubbing their toes and hurting their shoulders and joyous, faces flushed. Bren kissed both of them, hoping that the action would say enough for him, would express the depth of his love for them, would tell them both that they were the most important things in the world to him, that finally, at last, he was happy again, even if it was only for these few moments, because of them, happy to be with them, to know them. Somehow, his arm got caught between them when Astrid leaned up to kiss Eodwulf, or maybe when Eodwulf leaned down to kiss Astrid.

They kept dancing.

“Are you happy, Astrid?” Bren knew that he shouldn’t ask because he feared the answer. He wanted to take back the question the moment he asked it, wanted to hide his face against Eodwulf’s shoulder and make them both pretend that they hadn’t heard him at all.

It was nighttime. They had contorted themselves to fit on Astrid’s narrow bed again, this time with Eodwulf taking up most of the room because it was usually him crushed against the wall and that wasn’t necessarily fair, and Astrid was tucked again Eodwulf’s side, her back to the room at large, and Bren was mostly on top of Eodwulf, pressed against the wall.

For once, Eodwulf was sleeping. He had the most trouble sleeping out of all of them. So Bren had spoken quietly, more breath than words, and for one mad, absurd moment he wanted to clamber over both of them and leave the room so he didn’t have to hear the answer.

Astrid always answered all of his questions truthfully. Even if it hurt.

She was looking at him now, face solemn in the darkness. Moonlight didn’t hit her face because she was turned away from the window, and instead the white light of the moons was casting Eodwulf into a gentle glow. Vaguely, Bren remembered that Eodwulf was beautiful like in storybooks, he was beautiful every day even with dark circles beneath his eyes, but he was especially beautiful now, skin alight and hair darker, darker, so dark that the night sky should be jealous. Was jealous, probably.

But Astrid was cast in shadow, haloed and hallowed by moonlight. Bren could see her clearly, could see her face, the way that she gazed at him, and he realized that it had become harder and harder to read her. She had never been an open book, but now she was a mystery to him.

That scared him.

“Happy isn’t the word,” Astrid said, finally, voice quiet. Eodwulf shifted between them and they both looked at him. “I am determined, Bren.”

Briefly, dizzyingly, he wanted her to ask him if he was happy.

Yet he was afraid of his own answer, too. So instead he closed his eyes.

Eodwulf didn’t smell like hay, anymore.

When Master Ikithon told them they had a week’s break to go home for Harvest’s Close starting soon, they had all been surprised, but then relieved. Or, Bren was, at least, the reminder of his parents’ home inspiring in him a sharp ache that he realized was homesickness, which he hadn’t felt since he had arrived at Soltryce Academy.

A small part of him hoped that going home would somehow revitalize him, would revitalize all of them. The concern of how his parents would react to the bandages of his arms was secondary to his desire to curl up with Frumpkin and lean his head against his mother’s shoulder and listen to her and his father sing, harmonizing perfectly.

He thought that Astrid and Eodwulf were glad, too. Astrid hadn’t seen her little sister in ages, and Eodwulf hadn’t seen his family, and at their cores they were still farm kids whose family units were paramount to them, intrinsic and essential.

Two weeks later Bren wished they hadn’t gone home at all.

Bren told Astrid and Eodwulf first, voice wavering and hands shaking. Each of them took one of his hands in theirs and they squeezed, and then reached for each other.

Eodwulf always pressed his fingers against Astrid’s pulse, as if seeking for reassurance.

He wanted to cry. He did cry, and he cried harder when Astrid whispered, voice high and hard, of her own tale. Bren leaned against them when Eodwulf told them, in a terribly emotionless voice, of what he, too, had heard.

They told Trent Ikithon the next morning.

(The trick of it was that they had gone home and returned two days “early.”)

Leave their siblings untouched. They were still untainted by their parents’ treasonous words, they still had purpose for their country, they were not yet traitors. Leave their siblings untouched and prove themselves to the Empire that they swore to serve, because they were not traitors, because they were Volstrucker agents to be and they would conduct themselves as such, with their futures waiting for them just ahead, a promising honor. The highest honor.

For a strange, distorted moment, Bren wanted desperately to ask Eodwulf if he was happy.

He didn’t.

Returning to Blumenthal after they had recently left was strange and disjointed. It fit poorly across Bren’s shoulders, like something that was too tight or hadn’t been made for him at all. They rode in as the sun was setting, and each had their plans, they knew that Astrid and Eodwulf’s siblings were otherwise distracted by the small troupe that had come into town.

Bren traced the lines of Astrid’s palms as they waited outside of Eodwulf’s home. They sat smiling politely at dinner with Astrid’s parents, using their learned skills well, maintaining conversation and the guise that all was well. Their smiles only fell as Astrid’s parents fell to the ground, choking and twitching and dying and dead.

 _I love you_ , Bren thought as he passed Astrid and Eodwulf walking out of what was once the Beck family home, and striding purposefully towards the Ermendrud residence. _I love you, Astrid Beck. I love you, Eodwulf Grieve. I love you both. I love you both_.

There was a strange haze of desperation that descended over him as they blocked the door. A far off wailing that existed only in his head as he conjured fire in his palm and it began. A distant wail that grew into a riotous scream in the confines of his skull as he saw Frumpkin jump onto the windowsill.

He realized, after a moment, that the screaming was no longer in his head anymore. Or, it wasn’t entirely in his head, and had become externalized. He could hear his mother screaming for his father. Could hear his father screaming for his mother. Could hear them screaming. Screaming. Screaming.

Oh. He was screaming, too.

They shouted for him. Called for him. He could hear them, in a far off way. As if he was deep under water and sinking further and further, deep into the abyss, deep in the confines of a wildfire with flames raging in his ears and pressing against them, an awful roaring noise. But he could just make out their voices. Distinct. Anchors to reality. Comfort where there otherwise wouldn’t be any at all. Hands reaching for him, holding him. It hurt. It hurt. Everything hurt.

He hurt them.

He didn’t mean to hurt them.

He hurt them.

Unreality was strange. His mind was strange. His mind felt broken, fractured, falling apart in his skull and in his very hands. He was holding his mind in his hands. He wasn’t holding it together, and maybe he should be. It would be the smart thing to do. The logical thing to do. He should hold his mind together, because who else was going to?

Certainly not his mother. Not his father. Traitors—not traitors. What are they? Why are they dead? Why did they burn alive? Why did he burn them alive?

He hurt them.

He didn’t mean to hurt them.

Who was he?

Bren Aldric Ermendrud.

Was he?

Astrid’s face was alight in his mind. Eodwulf’s was fractured. They had swapped eyes, noses. Their builds were the same and not. There was Astrid’s mouth, there was Eodwulf’s ears, there was their arms around him. Whose arms? One or the other? Both, he was sure. They both could hold him. They both did hold him. Astrid’s face was alight, not a—bright but aflame. Claws in Eodwulf’s shoulder. Burning claws. A high, ringing noise. His screams and their screams. His parents’ screams? Astrid and Eodwulf’s? All of Blumenthal’s? Yes. Yes. All of the above.

He hurt them.

 _I’m sorry_.

There was Master Trent Ikithon. He felt rage, or maybe despair, or maybe betrayal? Wasn’t this the greatest honor? The highest honor? It was. It was. Maybe he could just lie to himself a bit longer. Just a little bit longer. He could be with them for just a little bit longer.

Please remember that I loved you both. I did. I did. _I did_.

**Author's Note:**

> you can find me on [twitter](http://www.twitter.com/widowgast) and [tumblr](http://nydorins.tumblr.com/).


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